


Domestic Troubles

by Grundy



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2017-11-11 09:26:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/477059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grundy/pseuds/Grundy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dawn's having a difficult time with kitchen spells.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** Buffy belongs to Joss, Harry belongs to JKR. No money is being made here, it's all in good fun.  
  
When the deafening bang echoed through the flat, Ginny tore into the kitchen just in time to see Dawn flop into the nearest chair and thump her head softly on the table.  
  
“It’s hopeless, Gin, I give up. Defensive magic, I’m great. Translation of runes, no problem. If it’s something the average Auror or curse breaker needs, I can do it. But I’m utterly rubbish at household spells. I’m going to have to live Muggle style. It’s not like I don’t know how.”  
  
Ginny Weasley grinned, well aware of her flatmate’s tribulations with domestic magic. She and Dawn had been friends pretty much since Dawn’s first day at Hogwarts, when Gin learned that the odd American not-exactly-Muggleborn was an orphan, with only one sister and a few friends for family.  
  
Ginny had been impressed when she learned said sister was a vampire slayer, but what had really made her and Dawn Summers what Dawn termed BFFs was finding out what Dawn’s life in Sunnydale had been like. Gin had opened up to her about the Voldemort experience after Dawn had told her about her blood being used to trigger an apocalypse, and the two of them had bonded.  
  
They’d been out of school well over a year now, living in a flat in a magical neighborhood in London, and Dawn had been trying for just over a month to learn how to cook like a witch instead of doing it the Muggle way. She’d been taking the Hermione approach, trying to learn it out of books like _Practical Household Magic_ and _One Minute Feasts_.  
  
It hadn’t exactly been a resounding success. Today’s mishap had apparently involved trying to peel potatoes. Ginny could tell, because they’d ended up peeled, all right- bits of potato peel currently decked every surface in the kitchen (her flatmate included) having departed their previous positions with explosive force. An entire sack’s worth of peeled potatoes sat on the table, giving off faint wisps of steam.  
  
“You might know how to live Muggle style, but I don’t,” she pointed out. “Mum may have made us peel or wash kitchen things by hand when we were underage, but I don’t think we ever did laundry with those funny machines or carried the rubbish out for the bin men. And I’m pretty sure the bin men don’t even know this flat exists, so the cleanup issue could be a real problem.”  
  
“No,” Dawn announced morosely without lifting her head up, “that’s the one thing I can do. I’ve had enough practice at _Evanesco_ to be _really_ good at it by now. Enough kitchen spells gone badly wrong that if I couldn’t get that right, I would have had to stop even sooner.”  
  
“Gin? Dawn?” came a familiar voice from the front hall.  
  
Dawn groaned.  
  
“Why does she pick today of all days to be early?”  
  
Ginny couldn’t help it anymore- she giggled, provoking a fierce glare from Dawn.  
  
“Oh, come on, Dawn, it’s not that bad. And it’s not like ‘Mione got _every_ spell right the first time-“  
  
“Merlin’s pants!”  
  
The witch in question had just walked into the kitchen, where she couldn’t avoid the sight (and sensation, in a few cases) of potato peel. Her eyes went from the peel on every surface but the nude potatoes on the table to her flatmates.  
  
“What on earth- Dawn, how did you do this?” Hermione asked, sounding more astonished than anything else.  
  
“See, Gin? Hopeless. She doesn’t even have to ask who’s responsible, she _knows_.”  
  
“Well, unless you’ve let Ron over here because George has forbidden him practicing cookery in _his_ flat anymore and he’s hiding in the bathroom…”  
  
“Wait, Ronald ‘why on earth would you want to do these things the Muggle way’ Weasley can’t cook using magic either?” Dawn demanded, bolting upright.  
  
Hermione raised an eyebrow. Ginny’s jaw dropped.  
  
“You’re saying _Ron_ of all people has been giving you a hard time about not using your wand?” Ginny demanded. “Oh, just wait until I get hold of my darling brother. No, wait, better- just wait until I tell Bill and Charlie and Percy and George what he’s been up to! He’ll never hear the end of it!”  
  
Hermione snickered at Dawn’s puzzlement.  
  
“Dawn, you may have noticed Ron’s not been round for dinner lately,” she began. At Dawn’s nod, she continued. “That’s because I got tired of him always turning up with some lame unbelievable excuse like ‘oh, I didn’t realize you girls were just sitting down to eat’ and then looking pitiful if he doesn’t get invited to have some.”  
  
“He did seem to be eating here pretty regularly for a while,” Dawn said cautiously.”But he hasn’t been unless you’ve invited him specifically for months now.”  
  
“Yeah, well, that’s because I banned him!” Hermione replied with a giggle. “I was chatting with Gin one day and we realized he’s always eating here because he still can’t cook! He would go for lunch in Diagon Alley with George, and we think he was getting breakfast at Harry’s, and then for dinner he came here. So I put my foot down. Told him he needs to put on his big wizard’s robes and learn to be self-sufficient, because I’m not spending a lifetime doing everything for him the way Harry and I had to when we were on the run. I’m happy for us to be partners, but I’m not going to be his mum or his maid.”  
  
“So Ron’s been trying to learn the same sort of kitchen and household spells you’re trying,” Ginny said, taking up the tale. “With about as much success, although if his misfires have been as bad as yours, he’s not admitted it to us- I bet George has a few stories. Except Ron’s been at it six times as long and if he’d been paying the least bit of attention all these years, he’s had a good example in Mum his entire life. You, on the other hand, had two years at Hogwarts to our seven and grew up Muggle. So other than me and ‘Mione, you’ve not had anyone to watch and learn these sorts of spells from.”  
  
“But your mum, Gin- she’d be loads of help for him, wouldn’t she?” Dawn asked. She knew Ginny’s parents, as they’d more or less adopted her and Buffy the way they’d adopted Harry.  
  
“He’s too embarrassed to ask, much less go home to Mum every night- cause it would mean admitting that the best he can manage is tinned baked beans on burnt toast,” Ginny replied with a wicked grin. “But you should ask Mum. She’ll cluck and fuss about what a shame it is your mother died before she could teach you, and probably have you doing fancy cakes and three course meals in no time.”  
  
Dawn was looking more cheerful now.  
  
“She’s right, Dawn,” Hermione nodded. “Molly’s been giving you and your sister the full family treatment ever since you moved in with us after leaving school anyway. Mention you’re trying to learn to cook, and she’ll have you sorted in a jiffy. And then you’d really be one up on Ron!”  
  
“Just wait ‘til I see him,” Dawn said with a smirk, as she waved her wand and cleared away the potato peelings from floor, ceiling, and everything in between.  
  
“Yes,” Hermione agreed serenely. “Particularly once you mention _you_ can at least clean up your own messes.”


	2. Someone's In The Kitchen

“This probably would run somewhat smoother if you kept your eyes open and on what you’re doing, dear,” Molly Weasley suggested, her voice rich with amusement.

Dawn opened one cautious eye and was surprised to see that the omelette she’d been trying to make was so far both omelette-ish and still in the pan. Previous attempts at cooking like a witch had met with such disastrous results that she occasionally relapsed into Pavlovian response – raise wand, brace for explosion.

With a smile, she directed her finished product onto a plate. One freshly made cheese omelette, ready to eat. The pleased look on her tutor’s face as she tasted it said all Dawn needed to know about how it had turned out.

Appealing to Molly for help had been Ginny’s suggestion, and Dawn was increasingly thankful she’d taken her up on it. Unlike Muggle cookery, learning one’s way around a magical kitchen wasn’t very easy to pick up from books. Since the wizarding world had yet to discover the joys of YouTube, being able to watch someone who knew what they were doing was invaluable – and as Gin had dryly pointed out, Molly was such a good example that most of her kids had turned into half-decent cooks without even realizing it.

The Weasley matriarch had been both flattered and appalled by Dawn’s plea- flattered that Dawn thought she was a better teacher than one of those expensive cookery courses offered by Madame Escoffier in Diagon Alley, and appalled that Dawn had soldiered on for so long with so many results that could only be described as ‘fiasco’. She’d laughed so hard at the story of the explosive potato peeling that she’d nearly cried, then told Dawn bracingly that they’d soon set her to rights.

She’d started Dawn out on the basics – chopping, peeling, boiling water, and such – before trying anything more complicated. To Dawn’s astonishment, after a few demonstrations, she usually got the hang of the wandwork involved, and by the time she’d been learning from Molly a few weeks, rarely needed to be shown more than once. It probably helped that she’d taken to keeping a sharp eye on Molly whenever she and her flatmates ate at Gin’s parents’.

They had been cautiously moving through simple recipes – chicken soup, sandwiches, spaghetti bol, toad in the hole – and were starting to attempt what Molly referred to as ‘fancier’ techniques. If Molly was aware that the girls were very keen to see Dawn succeed so she could show up Ron after his rotten attitude, she never let on.

But that was totally the plan – Ginny had already told Dawn with a wicked gleam in her eye that she knew exactly how they were going to get her even with her dear brother. So far, she’d refused to share, just saying airily that Dawn should keep on and let her know when she’d gotten confident enough that having an audience other than her or Hermione wouldn’t rattle her.

Dawn had a feeling that would be fairly soon, since George and Charlie had dropped in on their mum during the shepherd’s pie lesson yesterday. She already knew about George’s wicked sense of humor, but she hadn’t realized that Charlie shared it. She felt like if she could keep her cool with those two underfoot, Ron should be no problem. (It had occurred to her to wonder if Gin had engineered that situation.)

So here Dawn was, learning how to make breakfast. Oatmeal turned out to be a doddle – boiling water plus oats, let sit, even a first year at Hogwarts should be able to manage it. Toast wasn’t much more complicated, but you did have to mind the time so as not to wind up with burnt spots. Full English wasn’t really her thing, but Molly had pointed out that if she could whip up one of those, she should be good for just about any breakfast situation, given that it meant mastering both eggs and bacon.

Which brought her to her next question.

“How do you adapt a recipe from the Muggle way to the wizarding way?” Dawn asked.

So far they’d mostly been working from things Gin’s mum had been serving up for her family for years, but Dawn had a few things in mind that she suspected weren’t a feature in the Weasley household, like American-style pancakes and pumpkin pie.

“Goodness, I’m not really sure,” Molly answered, looking surprised. “I've never tried. I learned all my recipes either from family or from books I got in Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade, or the occasional article from Witch Weekly.”

She paused, thoughtfully.

“I suppose it can’t hurt to have a go, though, can it? Why don’t you just bring along whatever recipe you had in mind next time, and we’ll see what we can do.”

Dawn beamed. If they could figure this out, Sunday morning breakfasts were going to be the new thing in her flat. Hermione and Ginny would be over the moon – and Ron would be eating crow instead of pancakes.


End file.
